Tag Archive for 'Therapy'

where we’ve been

Published
by
JAGA
on October 17, 2008
in Julies, Unknown, julies (lc) and others (lc)
. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

it’s been a long, long, long month. since october 3rd through the 15th, we’ve been at the mother’s house almost every single day and night–only 1-3 nights when we weren’t there. she needed help cleaning her house before her 2 sisters came from out of town for bryan’s wedding this saturday. her house hasn’t been dusted in who knows how long and everything was dusty and dirty. the non main areas of the house were ultra cluttered and disorganized and just a mess. the main areas needed general pick up and deep cleaning because the bare minimum has been done for a long time. furniture needed to be moved and rearranged because it had been on the list for years and it needed to be done in order for there to be room for guests and for things to “look nice” and in a way “perfect” for her sisters…. as if things have always been this way and she isn’t as ill and out of sorts as she is.

one of the bigger Julies finally told the mother, “I’m disabled for a reason,” when referencing to the mother that we needed a break away from her and not going to her house when we said we would and that this was taking a huge toll on us and we were burnt out by everything. it took us so long simply because we can only manage so much concentration and energy to do anything and so what might have taken ordinary people a weekend for the amount of work that needed to be done and we did, it took us basically 2 weeks… and we still didn’t accomplish everything. there is a lot left to do and Sean came over several times to help and Loretta came over towards the end to help put things in order and get the basics done on things we just couldn’t get to because we were running out of time and our OCD couldn’t let go of certain things to ignore all the dust and dirt and crap of things that needed to be done and since we were doing it, it needed to be done right and while it took time, it took less time to do it right than to go back and do it over at some point and we had no interest in doing it over at any time in the near future and so we needed to do it then. even if it pissed off the mother because we weren’t getting everything done and it wasn’t getting done in the way she wanted or in the time she wanted and we weren’t listening to her towards the end to ignore the cleaning and just make it done and ready somehow. well fuck it, it’s fucking family coming to visit and if they can’t cope with it and realize the situation and that we did the best we could, then fuck it. damn it, some of us felt like if she still needed shit done, her sisters could help, because they are sisters after all. fucking hell she is ill.

we did let the mother know clearly again that we had no intentions on taking care of her when her health gets even worse. she’ll be going to a home or some place and other people will care for her, thank you very fucking much. we’ve cared for her as a child and as an adult and still to some degree do a lot of shit for her, and fuck it, we just aren’t doing it for her when she is totally in need of 24/7 care. fuck that. i don’t care if she is my mother. she fucking doesn’t deserve it from us. maybe if she cared for us as a child and cared for herself throughout our adulthood, then just fucking maybe we wouldn’t mind the idea of helping her when she gets older and more ill, but fucking hell, she isn’t coming to our home and we aren’t going to hers. and amazingly the mother seems to understand that and says she doesn’t want to do that to me or bryan. guilt i suppose or maybe she’s just saying that, but she seems to be sincere about it.

it seems hard to believe that so much time has passed and we were at the mother’s for so long. in coming out of the fog or whatever state we were in, the realization that we put our entire life, our entire personal to do list, our entire well being, our entire sanity, our entire everything on hold, and put away and pushed aside, all for her and her sake. we tried to tell ourselves it was for our aunts sake as well because they needed a nice enough place to stay, but really, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if they saw how things normally are. it’s like in the moment while it was happening we just didn’t seem to “get it” how much time was passing and how much we were putting aside all for the mother. on one level we knew it, but on many more greater levels, it wasn’t connecting. i guess it was just a dissociation and denial of the reality and truth of what was happening.

Sean said that he doesn’t want this to happen like this ever again. that he will pay for half of the cleaning the mother needs and call professionals in– that he doesn’t want to see us go through this again and what it did to us, etc. i think he saw more of the depth of the stress and toil and problems that this caused for us and our system and functioning than we did or do. he did see the mother as we knew her to be growing up and in our adult years for many years… he saw the mother we knew… the one who takes her stress out on us, simply because that’s what she does and who she targets…generally. the mother who was rude and snarky and bitchy to us when she wasn’t getting her way or what she wanted exactly or how she wanted it exactly… when her control wasn’t there over us and we were doing things the way we wanted to, when, how, and on our time schedule and not hers. he saw our anxiety when we didn’t realize we were anxious. the only thing we noticed was that we were irritated with the mother and couldn’t stand her and angry and hating that we were doing anything for her. i thought it was just that others inside who have mother issues had come forward closer to the front suddenly, as i’ve experienced this sudden “okay or no feelings or nothing or fine” to this sudden out of the blue intense internal feelings and issues and stuff that we’re fighting to keep under control and not show it to the mother that we can’t stand to be around her and don’t want to be there and certainly don’t want to be helping her or doing anything that pleases her, etc. apparently the mother irritated Sean too by what she said to us and around us, that interestingly, I didn’t hear or notice at all… but I’m guessing others inside did since they suddenly were triggered close by. The amnesia and separation was there for that.

There’s more… so much more to say and write about and get out in the open, but we are running out of time for that today.

We have therapy today with Cec… the first time since the beginning of September. And the stupid fucking thing about all of it is that my Medicaid was back dated which means we could have been seeing Cec all this time, but the fucking agency are assholes and idiots and really not for profit as much as they say they are cuz they fucking don’t work with people in our situation (we always get our Medicaid back dated but they seem to think we can afford $200 a month to pay them to see Cec regularly and then of course, oh geez, we will have a credit with them or they will owe us when our medical comes through as always). There’s more about this topic, but it’s what it is and we are bitchy and wanting and asking too much and spoiled. Spoiled because we had a reasonable therapist (Wendy) who worked with us all those years in our financial situation and still accepts a small monthly payment until someday our situation changes and we can pay her more and pay her off fully. We expect things to change and to be able to pay her fully off at some point in the next 5 years.

We are bringing Sean with us to therapy and he will be going in there with us as support. Cec didn’t want to meet him or anything anytime soon. This was several months ago. We gave her a heads up voice mail message and Billie is prepared to tell her to deal with it and that it is our fucking therapy and not Cec’s and Billie will royally be pissed if Cec takes issue with it. We clearly don’t have the best close connection or care too much and won’t concede to whatever Cec wants just because she wants it this way or that. We’re not in the mood for it and it’s our therapy and not Cec’s. There’s so much crap that Cec can’t and won’t give that we need and this one thing in addition to everything else is just one that we aren’t dealing with because we refuse to let Cec have her way on this. And if she throws a big tizzy about it, it only pushes us further away to get another therapist, which we are working on as it is. For many different reasons. Cec is still a good therapist, but there are things we need that she can’t or won’t give for any number of reasons and there are things that just don’t work in the long term for us with her or with the agency. It really doesn’t help that every 3 months (and less when all is taken into account) that we have a disruption of therapy for 3-6 weeks or so, simply because of the medical issue that always takes care of itself in the long run but the agency is all about money and less about working out a payment arrangement, etc. Whatever. And it is really less than 3 months because beginning Dec. 1st, we’ll be in this situation again and chances are it will be mid-late December before everything is taken care of and by then the holidays and whatnot will be around and well, whatever, in a month and a half we’ll have another unnecessary disruption of therapy. So yah, that really doesn’t bode well for conducive therapeutic relationship crap.

After therapy tonight, we go to the dress rehearsal and afterwards to the dinner. The father will be there at both. That brings up a shit load of emotions and thoughts and system confusion and disruption and uggh, it’s a mess, and conveniently we are sidestepping it because we’ve got to go and take care of a few things and then get dressed and ready for it and head to therapy and then all of that.

The father has been in town since Wednesday and tonight will be the first time we see him and first time we speak to him. We feel stupid and so babyish for being so anxious about it and worried and stressed and uggh. There’s been a lot of intense emotional pain as others come forward. They even cried for a brief few minutes, but really cried, which we haven’t been able to do for so long. It happened when we took Zoey outside to go to the bathroom. It was definitely young ones crying. It’s just so weird. And validating and works on any denial by me or others inside. I haven’t been consciously trying to focus on the whole father shit and the abuse shit and all that stuff. And yet sudden emotional pain and stress and freak out will come, seemingly from nowhere, unexpected and just definitely not contrived or created or instigated or nothing…. and this makes the reality of the abuse more real and true and less made up somehow, like somehow we are screwed up and we must be this awful daughter and person to falsely accuse him of such a thing. It’s hard to explain, but it just makes things harder to slip into the direction of denying and invalidating when we really want to do that because it is so much easier than standing strong and saying he abused us, it is real, he is a child rapist, etc. That is really hard to do, especially around family that is invested in denial and people who don’t want to hear or know that sort of thing anyways.

we’ve got to go. we feel so all over the place. we’re a wreck and utterly exhausted. and it’s october of all fucking months.

and there are quite a number of us that wish the father would fucking admit that he abused us. and we know we shouldn’t wish that and want that from him and we wish that it wouldn’t matter, but somehow it matters right now to quite a lot of us. but he didn’t when we confronted him 8 years ago and he’s extremely unlikely to do so now.

julies, Julies, others, and whomever around

Just Another Morning

Published
by
JAGA
on October 1, 2008
in Julie
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I need to go and get my Medicaid taken care of today at DSHS as it really needs to be done this morning, particularly if I want to try and see Cec today. We’ve been out of therapy since the beginning of September. That is never good for us at all. We called DSHS yesterday and the final part on their end had been taken care of and so all that was left was turning in a bill for our spenddown. We were realizing as well earlier this morning that we probably don’t have that many more times that we can utilize this bill before all the portions of it are used up for the spenddowns, at which point we won’t be seeing Cec anymore. So more pressure and a push to find someone privately that we can make payment arrangements with and someone that takes Medicare. There’s other reasons besides that one that we need to find another therapist, but that is one of them.

We’ve been awake since 5 or 6 am. The last two nights we’ve woken up after only a few hours of sleep. Tried falling back asleep, but then finally got up. Now we should be getting ready to go to DSHS to get this done and make a phone call to Cec to try and see her today. She didn’t return our call from last week to make an appt with her. This bothers us, but we’re trying to give her the benefit of the doubt until we can speak with her– something Wendy taught us and that we’re appreciative of.

In some ways it just seems easier to wait another week to see Cec and take care of this medical stuff tomorrow or Friday. In other ways I know we really, really need therapy right now. A lot of stuff is going on and therapy is just so very much needed.

All we want to do is to go back to bed and hopefully sleep, but I know that means we’ll probably be in bed until this afternoon. We have so much to do around here, business oriented stuff and personally, and yet we seem to only be able to do a little bit a day and sometimes not much of anything. I feel depressed and sad and something… something I recognize so very much. My heart aches inside and I feel the weights of so many things that I’m carrying. And sadness, such deep sadness within.

Such is life.

Julie

Still Here, sort of

Published
by
JAGA
on April 19, 2008
in Julies
. 2 Comments Tags: , .

We’re still here even though we haven’t been writing very much at all and really, we haven’t been reading as many journals as we usually do.

We haven’t had therapy since mid March.  We’re still in the process of getting our Medicaid resolved so that we can return.  It’s a very convoluted mess that we go through regularly but this time it is really screwed up and we already can see in the future that we’ll have regular interruptions in therapy because of it (some policy stuff changed) and also because the agency we’re going to, they won’t accept any payment arrangements.  Oddly enough if we had insurance to begin with, but lost it, and so had zero insurance at this point in time, they would accept the payment arrangement that we can actually afford and come up with somehow for our co-pay.  And ultimately in the future we’re not going to qualify for Medicaid as easily as we do now, because at some point the bill we are using to apply towards our spend-down will be all used up and no longer valid to use.  So at some point, the agency will say another big F-U by actions and we’ll have to move on from them anyway since being able to pay for once a month therapy is just not worth it to us.  We’d rather have zero therapy than wasting money and time on once/month therapy that we know what it will be like as it is always hard to return to therapy, get comfortable with our therapist again, and feel safe enough to talk about the bigger issues, let alone talk about anything knowing we have a month to deal with it on our own.  I don’t want a chit chat basic update bull shit of a session once a month when I could use that money for other things I need.

In the meantime we’ve been trying to research and compile a long list of therapist names to call.  We’ve called quite a number of them, but most of them have full caseloads and the few that might not, they don’t take Medicare.  We’re trying not to give up yet as there is a whole phone book in a relatively large city and outlying area that we can call blindly and see if any of them have experience and stuff that we’re looking for.  We have found one therapist that we interviewed but we haven’t been back since.  We’re going to make an appointment with her this next week.  However, we’re going to continue looking around and finding a therapist that we “click with” relatively quickly.  It’s hard to say just yet with this new therapist that we interviewed as we asked her tons of questions and really didn’t do any therapy talking.  And we aren’t going to say good-bye to Cec until after we’ve found a therapist we’re comfortable with.

So all of that to really say that we are seriously wondering how much our lack of therapy has contributed to our lack of journal writing.  I know some of it has just been all the changes we’ve been going through– moving and getting settled in new place, new romantic relationship, therapist stuff, etc.  Some of it has just been pure exhaustion and so much going on externally.  But even still, I would have thought this past week or so that we would have written and we really haven’t.  I can’t believe how long it has been since we (Julies) have written here.  We think of writing this or that from time to time, but we just don’t actually come here.  Even at our support group the last few weeks, we’ve had no idea what to say really, because so much has been pushed back deeper inside and therapeutic issues that we usually are working on are just not there in the forefront for us to talk about.  We end up with this blank mind and not really able to grasp anything of depth to discuss and we just don’t like our share to be all about general basic update of stuff.

So well, we’re around and still here kind of.  We need to leave to go visit our nephews and hang out with them until tomorrow sometime.  We were going to leave earlier today but we had been doing some research online for Sarah and her Wedding stuff and we ended up needing a nap afterwards and we slept a long time.  It seems silly to leave so late now, but I know the boys will be up late and it will be good to be there first thing in the morning as we have to leave earlier than usual tomorrow to go somewhere afterwards.

I wish sometimes it wasn’t so hard for us to leave our house as I know that we procrastinate and put it off and insiders get scared, anxious, and probably take part in us needing extra naps and stuff in order to prolong actually leaving our house.  Even when we want to see them and now that it is further away, it makes it a bit more overwhelming to leave.  The crazy thing is once we are there, we will be fine, and we will be enjoying our nephews and wishing we had left much earlier and will be berating ourselves for not leaving sooner and making it just happen somehow.

So that’s a little bit of where we’re at right now with things and what’s going on.  We’ll try to return again soon to write about something.

Julies